


To Sing Holy, Holy

by melliyna



Category: Criminal Minds
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-18
Updated: 2009-12-18
Packaged: 2017-10-04 14:07:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,471
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/31046
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/melliyna/pseuds/melliyna
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Written for the <a href="http://melliyna.livejournal.com/358755.html">CM Gen Comment Ficathon</a> in response to a <a href="http://bluerosefairy.livejournal.com/profile"><img/></a><a href="http://bluerosefairy.livejournal.com/"><b>bluerosefairy</b></a> prompt <i>Hotch, Morgan, Reid, Gideon, Rossi, the difference between being a victim and feeling like a victim</i> (Title from 'Me And A Gun' by Tori Amos).</p>
    </blockquote>





	To Sing Holy, Holy

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the [CM Gen Comment Ficathon](http://melliyna.livejournal.com/358755.html) in response to a [](http://bluerosefairy.livejournal.com/profile)[**bluerosefairy**](http://bluerosefairy.livejournal.com/) prompt _Hotch, Morgan, Reid, Gideon, Rossi, the difference between being a victim and feeling like a victim_ (Title from 'Me And A Gun' by Tori Amos).

  
  
  
**Entry tags:** |   
[fandom: criminal minds](http://melliyna.livejournal.com/tag/fandom:+criminal+minds), [fic](http://melliyna.livejournal.com/tag/fic), [genre: gen](http://melliyna.livejournal.com/tag/genre:+gen), [rating: r](http://melliyna.livejournal.com/tag/rating:+r)  
  
---|---  
  
_**[Fic: Criminal Minds: To Sing Holy, Holy]**_  
**Title:** To Sing Holy, Holy  
**Author:** [](http://melliyna.livejournal.com/profile)[**melliyna**](http://melliyna.livejournal.com/)  
**Fandom:** Criminal Minds  
**Pairings:** None  
**Word Count:** 2,400  
**Rating:** R  
**Warnings:** References to sexual assault, violence and death. S5 Spoilers.  
**Disclaimer:** Criminal Minds, the concept and the characters belong to their creator, CBS and their respective actors. I do this entirely for the fun of the enterprise, not for profit.  
**Author's Note:** Written for the [CM Gen Comment Ficathon](http://melliyna.livejournal.com/358755.html) in response to a [](http://bluerosefairy.livejournal.com/profile)[**bluerosefairy**](http://bluerosefairy.livejournal.com/) prompt _Hotch, Morgan, Reid, Gideon, Rossi, the difference between being a victim and feeling like a victim_ (Title from 'Me And A Gun' by Tori Amos).

_Rape is loss. Like death, it is best treated with a period of mourning and grief. We should develop social ceremonies for rape, rituals, that, like funerals and wakes, would allow the mourners to recover the spirits that the rapist, like death, steals. The social community is the appropriate center for the restoration of spirit, but the rape victim is usually shamed into silence or self-imposed isolation. _

You start to think about why. It's not about why he did, it's what you did.

There's a lot Aaron Hotchner remembers but he keeps his silence to his team. The statement to Boston Police goes as well as might be expected and he can see the thoughts of one of the Sergeants. It's there, because that was what Foyet whispered, just before he finally blacked out. That's what the scars are, not the ones made with the knife. Though the knife doesn't help. It slides his way in to night-mares, waking dreams (that was around the blood, so much of the blood) and he wonders if he'll feel every inch of Foyet for the rest of his life.

You don't burden the others with this. Hotch couldn't lie to Jack. He told omissions to the others because the looks of the Boston Police and the pity of anonymity is better than the shame of having given his team one more burden, one more pain to bear. They don't need to be drawn in to Foyet. In to what Aaron has done because of who he trusted. He didn't look, when he walked in. He's fairly sure he's checked his security alarm fifteen times now, searching for the fault, for the careless slip.

It's not that he thinks he's better or smarter, it's that he is worse, maybe. His team don't need the burden of him. This is Hotch's thoughts, in the early weeks.

-

_Of crimes injurious to the persons of private subjects, the most principal and important is the offense of taking away that life, which is the immediate gift of the great creator; and which therefore no man can be entitled to deprive himself or another of, but in some manner either expressly commanded in, or evidently deducible from, those laws which the creator has given us; the divine laws, I mean, of either nature or revelation._ (William Blackstone)

Jason Gideon wonders if there's a golden rule about fugitives and Atlantic City. Either way, he's found himself there but is fairly sure he isn't staying. Transience is a physical state and a state of mind. He's got his car, changed his name (legally, but under the radar legally), shaved what remained of his hair and tries not to use plastic more than he absolutely has to. Really, it's just the coward's way of putting a gun in his mouth and pulling the trigger. Because this way, this way he's got the option of being found again, if they ever wanted to. He would not seek them out, but he couldn't stomach the thought of never being able to be found by, to be sought by them.

If so desired. It terrifies and exalts him equal measure. And maybe you can't run from your mind, but you can certainly run from your life and the physical associations contain therein. Apartments, musuems, people, monuments, memories, restaurants, invitations to nights out (he never returned them, but they were invitations, burnt in to his brain). Chess games. Gideon gave up chess, after he crossed the Virginia state line. To play, you have to be able see ahead, to think ahead. He never wants to think ahead again, to stare across at another and profile. These days he lives off his savings and sometimes, the work he does privately. He'd worked as a trucker/courier in the years before college, before the Marines, before the FBI and the particular way you need to pace yourself on those long drives never left him. You have to be able to stay awake, stay alert and aware. And know when to stop along the way.

He's learned to stop when he's tired enough to just eat and sleep. Otherwise, he'll dream of the Jason Gideon who was and look, look where that led him. To Frank. There are rules now. Don't think, don't look. Don't stay in a motel near a train track or a diner in a desert. He'd burnt everything, that very first night. First, the badge (his gun, his gun was still safely concealed where he could reach it). Torched with a just purchased lighter outside a 7/11 in Charlottesville, giggling students out for late night ice cream playing him no mind. Second, the address book. Ripped up, blacked out and then shredded in to pieces to be thrown in to a incinerator, after he'd made a delivery to a hospital somewhere in the backwoods of New Jersery. Hotch and Reid's names are the last he sees. Third, the gifts. Thrown in to a river. One book on the history of bird watching in Virginia. One beautiful set of chess figures, carved in sandal-wood in the style of India. Two box-sets of Charles Chaplin movies, with attached note. One jar of home-made apricot jam, with a hand written label. All safe in the river. Fourth, the photographs, to a burial on a beach in Maine, sealed in a box. He'd been delivering supplies to a grocery wholesalers.

They are safe now, buried beneath the sand. No one can find them, no one can use them when they cannot be seen. Gideon tells himself this, over and over again. They are safe now. Reid's curiosity, Morgan's bravery, Garcia and her smile, resilient JJ, Elle, for whom he is so very sorry. Emily Prentiss and the way she can listen so very well. Hotch. They are safe, he repeats when he thinks of Hotch. It is better this way, far better. He has done what he needed to, what must be done. The best he could and this is how the story goes. It will go on without him and he will protect them. He is protecting them, Gideon tells himself. It is only about protecting them.

Gideon settled in Maine for a while. He rented somewhere in the middle of the city. Pays in cash, in credit. He drives trucks within the city, does deliveries. When his boss asks about his family, he tells him that he has three sons and four daughters, but he hasn't seen his oldest son in a long time. Good kids, he says, in a friendly way that anyone normal would, in the way that you do when you have a conversation in the everyday world. That night, he can't stop feeling sick. Can't stop thinking of Frank. Frank will find them. Frank will find him and he'll make him plead again. He'll take them and make him plead.

He leaves as soon as he can, without notice and goes to San Francisco. It's as far from DC as he can think to go.

-

_Wherever there's opportunity, the mafia will be there._ (Johnny Kelly)

David Rossi knows exactly what he walked out. It was his life.

Family, friends, weddings, fourth of July. Thanksgiving. A thousand little get-togethers, potluck nights, fishing trips. Vacations to the lake. Adventures with the other kids. Close family friends, who'd taught him how to fish, clapped him on the back, given him his first job (it was as a dishwasher, in one of the restaurants. He'd worked his way up to short order cook, then been an apprentice chef for a while. Leo had been boastful, proud of his skills, let alone his knife work). They don't tell you that the Mafia is a community, when it's studied but then not many people have lived it like he has and chosen the path he did.

His father, mother, brother and sister love David their son, Dave their brother but they hate Agent Rossi and he understands why. Because to be a Fed, that means someone you love dragged away to prison. That means shoot outs, fear and alarm, screaming men with guns in the faces of your children. Rossi remembers as a child, learning how to clean up after the house had been searched, after they'd searched his room. Mom, re-sewing the split seams of toys that had been sliced open and trying to calm the tears. The stitches were neat, but it does stick in your mind when you are six years old and this bear has been your companion. Dad, who would always have time for a hug. Dad never let the anger in his voice show towards his kids. If he'd stayed, Rossi can see him holding grand-kids that have Emma's hair and teaching them how to fish, how to fix a boat. How to be in the family and never, ever get out.

David Rossi knows exactly why he walked out. It would have been his life if he hadn't.

He could have stayed and become a loving father who made sure to wash the blood off his hands before he walked in the house and might have taught his son to do the same. Who thought in blood feud and rivalry and kept to codes from a long ago time. He could have opened a restaurant, made sure he hired good security and kept an eye out for raids. He and Emma could have done that together. Or maybe they could have run together, found a place for a family, a boat and a library somewhere else. Emma liked the place they had been born and raised though. She wanted to keep to it, keep to the friends, the traditions and the weekend get-togethers. The annual fairs, the fireworks. Young David Rossi just wanted to get out, without seeing the way to a compromise.

Dad's face still haunts him. It's the reason neither Mary or Peter will respond with more that frosty politeness when he calls and when they finally did thaw out, there's always a hesitancy. Rossi knows the code. You can't talk about things in front of the Fed, even if he is family. Maybe especially if he is family. Rossi Senior. Dave knows that his father never stops loving him, never stops trying to talk him out of the path that he's gone down. That's why his face haunts him. After his Mom died, he started to dream about it. She'd held it all together with love, a wooden spoon and the best damn pasta sauce on the East Coast. Half the town was in envy of Mama Rossi's tomato sauce. Papa Rossi used to brag about his wife being the best damn cook you could find, she'd laugh and demur and they'd all know it was time to be fed.

David Rossi knows exactly why he came back, now. He needed to realise the ways in which he had a blessed life. He had love, he has love, he has a family.

-

_Torture has never been a reliable means of extracting information. It is ultimately self-defeating as a means of control. One wonders why it is still practiced._ (Jean-Luc Picard)

Spencer ticks off the fading numbers of bruises and scars. Some of them have a longer progression towards healing than others. It was the needle marks that stuck around the longest, but in some ways those were both the hardest and easiest for the same reason. They came from the Henkel he had wanted to save. The others were simply one more beating he had taken. He can still taste the vomit in his mouth, at the weirdest moments. But then, remembrance is a strange thing beyond the written word and he's never sure, exactly what he experienced when looking at it after. He remembers the way the rice krispie treat came back up, the way Hotch replaced the ones he'd left in his desk for a while. The way that chair had felt, strangely comfortable against his back. It felt like high school, the anticipation of torture yet to come and trying to remain unknown, unnoticed.

The perfect child. But was it for peers or for teachers. You can't be both, Spencer. He'd had to find a balance.

When he feels pain later, it's good to feel it without narcotics. Because maybe he's broken, oh so broken but he knows he's rebuilding. And more than that, he knows he doesn't have to be perfect here. It's the way Emily accepts his apology that isn't explicitly an apology, the way Garcia goes right back to bickering about Star Trek with him, the way Morgan so earnestly tries to help and they both know what they are trying to do, JJ treats him like himself and Hotch, Hotch is the one he hugged first. Hotch listens and knows what to say and what not to say, when maybe no one else would. And Reid, Reid knows he can go to him, to them.

He knows how to shape the vocabulary of 'I'm not okay, but I'm going to be, you guys' now. He knows his family trusts him.

-

_Tragedy is a tool for the living to gain wisdom, not a guide by which to live._ (Robert Kennedy)

Derek Morgan doesn't keep a tally of the saved. He just knows what he does, why he does it. It's about them, it's about him but it's about protection. It's about survival. It's about knowing that just maybe, you've made the world that little bit less tarnished. And maybe, maybe this is the way he's given Carl Buford his own particular sentence. Because every time he puts the cuffs on someone, every time he doesn't beat the hell out of them, every time he checks himself, thinks and tries to help the right way, it's something he's overcome. Every trust given, that's a win.

He's done a lot of tallying for himself, though. Because it's not just about surviving, it's about the ties he's built. It's about being honest enough to know when damage is going to collide with other people.

This is how Derek Morgan saves himself.


End file.
